


a bruise like a flower

by phasmachinas



Series: goretober 2020 fills [1]
Category: Mexican Gothic — Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Genre: F/M, References to canon-typical fuckery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:47:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26773144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phasmachinas/pseuds/phasmachinas
Summary: Francis leaves High Place. High Place has a harder time completely leaving him.
Relationships: Francis Doyle/Noemí Taboada
Series: goretober 2020 fills [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1951783
Comments: 23
Kudos: 48





	a bruise like a flower

**Author's Note:**

> First fill for goretober 2020 using aless-was-here's prompt list (#1 bruises) and it had to be Mexican Gothic because it ate my whole brain. Please don't look at me.

The gloom doesn't leave him kindly.

High Place is a cruel garden and if he's to be transplanted, if he's to hope to take to another soil, it won't be without the reminder of where he first sprouted.

The bruise sits on his chest in the shape of a ghostly hand dressed in purple and blue flowers, the hand of a gardener wanting to uproot him and drag him back.

In his dreams it does just that and then when he's awake he can't look at it for too long or he'll see the colors pulsing, ebbing and flowing, remembering and not letting him forget. It was already there when he first came into the doctor's office in El Triunfo and it was still there when he was to leave his hospital room in Mexico City. No amount of medicine makes it go away, not even Marta's tincture.

High Place and what really happened is contained inside the three of them (Noemí and Catalina and himself), and so they whisper of it in english, the only language High Place knew how to speak.

It was in whispers on that last day when she went to pick him up at the hospital that he finally told Noemí, the tips of his ears going red as she'd demanded to see— eventually relenting when he kept refusing.

But Noemí had looked and looked into his face first before changing the topic and Francis didn't even want to picture what she saw, but he did: His eyebags and his paleness might not be as prominent as when he left the house but by her side he looks sickly, inadequate, a frail flower not getting enough sun.

 **“We'll go to the beach,”** She said afterwards as if she'd read his thoughts, him crowding close to her without realizing it, exhausted, on the car ride to her house. **“The air will do us good, and you ought to see how dashing I am in a swimsuit.”**

He had blushed furiously then. She loved to tease him.

* * *

Francis doesn't know if Noemí defied her father or if she had to convince Mr. Taboada to let him tag along just as her and Catalina had to first convince him of letting a penniless and sickly Francis stay temporarily in the house, or if Mr. Taboada had taken a look at him and decided that Francis was nothing like Virgil, that for some unknown and miraculous reason the poison had all been contained on the other Doyle.

The point is that Mr. Taboada says nothing as they leave and take Catalina with them.

And Catalina. She's little by little returning to who she used to be, they're surprised to see. She's the first to ditch her shoes and wander into the surf, walking back with both hands outstretched towards them like a benevolent sea goddess. Francis takes one, Noemí the other, and together they waddle, street clothes and all, until they're buried to their necks, laughing and splashing.

Noemí is not wearing makeup and this close he can see her exhaustion manifested in her eyebags.

He thinks of the tiny bit of poison still inside him and absentmindedly touches his chest under the water, doesn't flinch at the tenderness of it. He's tender all over.

* * *

**“Not bad for your first time seeing the ocean.”** Noemí tells him back at the posada between drags of her cigarette, grinning. 

He's shivering slightly, still drying from earlier, the cold of the late evening getting to him.

Noemí puts her cigarette in his fingers, tells him how to smoke, tells him it'll warm him up. The three of them are sitting side by side by the tables in the patio— the plants here free of malignancy, not a trace of mushrooms.

He follows her instructions, badly, and coughs until tears come running down his cheeks and she has to take her cigarette back and make soothing motions with her hands on his back while Catalina chastises her and pours him some water.

 **“I was the same. And then I couldn't stop.”** Noemí says when his fit stops, disarming smile back in place.

He freezes, stares at her. He's blushing furiously, he knows, and it just makes Noemí beam more. She's vain and she knows the effect she has on him. They all do, he supplies mentally, as Catalina stands up and walks into the house, hiding a smile.

Noemí glances at Catalina's retreating back and then back at him curiously. She looks like some nighttime divinity, delicate, smoke drifting from between her lips.

And like divining him, she leans down slightly and kisses him. He doesn't cough this time.

When the stars are out, Catalina comes back with blankets for all of them. She starts by saying _Érase Una Vez, Once Upon a Time,_ and Noemí huddles closer to her, already smoking another cigarette as if making up for all those times she wasn't allowed to indulge.

Catalina tells them of two princesses and a destitute prince locked together in a tower, of how they lifted the curse and walked out of the maze to find the world remade kinder and sweeter and then they all fall asleep under the stars.

He doesn't dream of the house. He dreams of floating out to the sea, the poison leaving him in rivulets that color the sea a deep and dark purple and blue, only rouses out of his dream to walk back to his room with everyone else.

In the morning he lifts up his shirt tenderly, hesitating before looking at his chest in the mirror and when he does, he traces the new shape carefully— a hand that now has lost its fingers, that's just a bruise on its way to being fully healed.


End file.
